Champions are kind of pitiful, and other thoughts.

egable

Join Date 09/2002

Champions are kind of pitiful, and other thoughts.

Not sure if this has been pointed out before, but my biggest issue right now is with champions.

1) When a champion levels up, the points gained are not enough to make the champion really powerful by late game. They just plain "get owned" by pretty much everything in the late game.

2) Champions don't really have much more health than any single unit you can train at your cities. That is a major problem because of 3.

3) When my level 9 champion with 30 health, 70 attack, and 30 defense fights a group of 10 bad guys with 150 attack and 32 defense, he swings, hits for around 25, then the stack retaliates and the champion is hit for 92 damage and is dead. Well, there went several hours of building up that champion for nothing. He couldn't even beat a single 'unit' that was trained at a city.

Now, the solution to this is simple: Let champions form groups. Then you can put all your champions in your army into one fighting group and they might be able to stand up to the other units.

Also, mounted units should be *much* harder for non-mounted units to hit. And, when they *do* hit, they should only hit for small amounts of damage because they will only get grazing blows. That is why mounted knights are so devastating against foot soldiers in battle.

I also have to agree with others that spells are exceedingly redundant and un-interesting. I'm worried Stardock is going to take a lot of heat from critics out there when they review the gold edition without updating to the Day-0 release.

Finally, while there are a lot of aspects of the new UI that I like, it almost feels like some of the stuff i want to use frequently has been buried in additional "layers" and I need to search for them now instead of having them right at my fingertips.

The champions issue is my biggest complaint, with spells my next biggest. When those two are addressed, then I think this will be a great and interesting game. However, I cannot really enjoy building up a champion when I know that if the champion engages in battle it will just mowed down. I also cannot really enjoy the spell aspect when they are pretty much all the same, not very powerful, and just plain un-interesting. On the other hand, the empire building and unit building are pretty good, but unless units can be combined into groups later and have their equipment updated, they will never be great.

Basically, I guess I just feel that the game is not yet finished. I know Stardock is planning on working on the game for the next year, but I almost feel like it should not have been released yet. I think it needs another 3-6 months of polish, at least, before I would consider it ready for release. I fell kind of sad for Stardock, because I can already see the critics' reviews ...they won't wait for 3-6 months for extra polish. They will judge the game based on it's initial release, and those reviews will stick around for years and keep people from playing the game and realizing that things have improved.

elemental

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Tasunke,

reply 75

Quoting Slainangel52,
reply 70
Quoting ddd888, reply 69you can boots hp, i usually do it once or twice at start to avoid random deaths for unlucky hits Even if you spent every point on HP they're still not going to approach the level of creatures that through random BS will still smack them down in 1-2 hits. Even with double the defense rating they were consistently being hit for 10-12 damage. At best 6 levels of hp boosting might give you the ability to take two of those strikes, maybe 3 if you're lucky. Of course if you can still wear infinite rings and necklaces you could just spend thousands of gold on items per champion just to keep them from imploding when somebody looks at them. That of course would be moronic, you'd be better served just making troops with the gold instead.

actually, I bought about 20 amulets of attack for my Snathi daughter-in-law, and boosted her to 4800 attack (she had maybe 190 defense?)

the best part? She had 10 combat speed, and I gave her a longbow

Well that's not a bad tradeoff if you had to spend that kind of money. That's about fair what you have there. I'd rather see players and myself have to spend huge amounts of money to get a hero up to that level instead of playing the levelup exploitive game like in MOM and AOW and HOMM and get there easily. How much did all that cost you?? Plus all of that stacks like that eh? I bet the whiners really complain about that huh? lol

Successfully updated karma reason!

It would be good if the units in groups attacked individually, but got some bonus still from attacking as group. Maybe the defense of the attacked unit could be lowered after each successive attack, for example to 90% of what it was before.

So, 10 units attacking, defense of 40 originally:

First attack is against the defense of 40, second is against defense of 40*.9 = 36, the third against defense of 40*.9*.9 = ~32, ..., and the last is against defense of 15. Changing the multiplier to .95 would result the last attack to be against defense of 25. This be per-turn drop, so that if 5 stacks of 10 manage to attack you, the last attack is against defense of 40*0.9^49 = 0.2. Don't get surrounded! Or it could be just per stack attack, so that the next stack attacking the unit would start again from 40. And of course special abilities to change the multiplier, both in attack and in defense.

Also, non-linear defense and attack rolls sounds good to me, especially if the HP amount of champions will be as low as it is now. Fighting with these champions is pure luck at the moment.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I actually bought Masters of Magic when it came out, before I even owned a PC. I saw it and thought 'Omg, they made the game I dreamed of!' Yeah yeah, I know.

I thought the system of 'swords' and 'shields' with a 'chance to hit' while basic, worked extremely well.

I knew each shield on my unit or heroes had a base 30% chance to block a point of damage. I knew each sword represented a 30% chance to do 1 point of damage.

I also knew, better units (IE, heroes, more advanced units, seasoned troops) would gain bonuses to hit. Thus making each 'sword' have a better chance to overcome the defending units defenses and doing its point of damage.

Good heroes (through equipment, spell buffs, levels gained from experience, traits, etc) might only have 10 shields, but could have 70-80% chance for 'each' shield to block a point of damage, whereas a low level right out the starting gate hero would not have such bonuses.

What it meant in the long run is, I could tailor my heroes into tank types if i wanted, high attack/hits so as to be lethal in combat, huge resistances to make them almost immune to spell damages/debuffs. That is the element that really put the whole RPG stats/improve a hero into the game imo.

Even those big creatures could still be scary. A dragon might have 30 attacks, with a 15 strength breath attack on top of that. His breath might be 'armor piercing', which halved the defense of the defending unit. He also might have the first strike ability, allowing his 'attacks' to hit units first on attack AND counterattack, unless such units had the same ability to negate his advantage. He also would have a massive hitpoint pool, to soak up damage before he died.

People, myself included, expect end game monsters and heroes to be these tough, hardy units.

When I played mom, how did I tackle such units? I didn't always uber enchant/gear heroes and get tons of levels and then go steamroll these things. Often I would use the best trainable troops I could make, like Dwarven Hammerhands, built in a city next to resources that improved my units attack/defense. I would then 'enchant' the snot out of my hammerhands, and maybe bring a hero along into battle with the stack of hammerhands to provide spell support (buffs, heals, debuffs) and let my hammerhands 'work' on killing those dragons or other nasty things. Sometimes all my units would die, and I would have to retreat with my hero, and bring back a 2nd army to finish off the tough nut to crack monsters/monster lairs (who, btw, kept the damage you did to them from any previous battles) It cost me a lot of gold to throw armies at these tough monsters, but it was a strategy to whittle them down to claim those nice rewards for killing the lair! If I overextended myself trying to crack these lairs, enemy wizards would come in with big armies and make me pay for mobilizing my best units and taking them away from my cities!

Criticize it if you want, but I found the system to work out really well. It made my heroes feel like heroes. I think with enough care and time, heroes should approach amazing power. It should be slow, expensive, but achievable. Just about any game like this with 'hero/champion' units follows the path that these units are a more valuable resource than a common garden variety unit. Age of Wonders, Heroes series, Mom, even MOO with 'heroes' attached to ships for bonuses was a great idea!

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Austinvn,

reply 43

I really don't think that's a problem - if you're sending poorly equipped soldiers with 10 attack each against some godlike creature with 100 defense, sure you won't even scratch it 90% of the time, but isn't that the way it should be in such an extreme situation? Practically speaking, it's rare to get single units with 100 defense*, and it's much more common to get single units over 10 attack, so that's taking a rare and extreme case and complaining that the results are.. well, extreme. Really that's exactly the result you should get, given unusually small attack vs. unusually large defense.

Not only that's the result you should get but it's also the way Frogboy Himself described to us the combat system a while ago: that even 1000 peasants wouldn't defeat a dragon!

Quoting MxM111,

reply 42

Indeed, I understand, why attack is higher (10 swords is better than one), why health is greater (10 units have more health), but defense should not stack! The defense for 10 inits is exactly the same as for single, your shield does not become thicker just because there are 10 people with 10 shields. If anything, it is EASIER to hit one out of 10 people than just one (think of archer attacking 10 people vs attacking 1, for example).

DEFENSE SHOULD NOT STACK!!!

Quoting Raven X,

reply 46

Exactly. Neither should attack. They are stacking by the "count" of individual units. Instead of doing that the engine should be swinging and defending for each individual attacker. Meaning if there are 10 units with Def 10 and they get attacked by 10 units with attack 5, then there should be 10 separate attacks and 10 separate defense rolls made. It only take a fraction of a millisecond for even the slowest computers to do the calculations on it. Stacking doesn't make sense from neither a game nor a math perspective. Attacks and Defense don't accumulate because you've got "more" of something, it multiplies. 5 attack times 10 individual swings vs 10 individual defense checks made against attack value 5. It's not rocket science.

Let me dissent on this! I don’t say attack and defense should stack totally but there should be some bonus for training a group (like you’re getting a discount if you’re buying a 6-pack instead of a single beer ), perhaps tied to the training level (the 2 upper levels) or to some mid-game tech (or both). Of course it should take more training time and some gold.

Why? Think about the most powerful forces of Ancient Times: the Roman Legion, the Macedonian Phalanx, the Spartans. Sure, they were usually well-trained as individuals but what made them able to fight outnumbered and win against hordes of Persians, barbarians and others was their ability to fight IN FORMATIONS. Like Leonidas says in “300”, each guy protects his neighbor during the fight. In defence and attack, this should show as a huge bonus, making a roman ‘turtle-square’ akin to one big creature full of spikes and scales. In no way should a pack of 20 brigands or goblins fight the same way as 20 legionnaires. That could also be a cultural trait giving some advantage to the Kingdoms (which are more collective and less individual based).

Quoting shadowtongue,

reply 13

Bah, the combat system from Dominions was great at modeling how big units would fare against a hoard of little guys. I don't understand the reasoning behind the current implementation, and I don't understand why every designer thinks they have to invent their own system.

YES, YES AND YES!!!

And while it works for combat, it can be said for almost everything. Everytime a new game goes out, you’d believe that they would just improve on what worked in other games and then focus mainly on gameplay/lore/campaign. I mean, there’s not 15 different ways to group or ungroup units in those games but Elemental’s CTRL+Left is perhaps the worst I have seen (granted, I don’t play many games) while they could (they still can) just copy the Age of Wonders way. Hell, AoW is 12 years old but you can immediately see who’s in the group (bigger icons than EWOM) and join/divide just by left-clicking on icons.

IF IT WORKS, COPY IT! Because there’s already enough other mechanisms to work on without having to re-invent the wheel with the interface, the combat calculations, the movements, etc…

(of course, I hope version 1.02 make this last comment obsolete but I doubt it)

Successfully updated karma reason!

Each unit in stack should have attack/def and hitpoint pool so that as it wears down it gets weaker.

Make attacks hit auto on a certain result. like d20 where a 20 always hits meaning even a peon farmer has a 5% chance to hit.

As for one persons comment saying that the problem would then become dragons taking 10 turns to kill a stack [which would certainly be silly]

Have damage "splash" ie if you do x over a units hp the damage continues to the next unit in stack. say 1.5x for example.

Each unit in stack has 10hp then if you do over 15 damage the damage goes to next unit. and so on.

Dragon breathes fire on stack doing 100 damage. 85 carries over to the second unit, 70 to the third, 55, 40, 25, 10. So in one breath the dragon takes out 7 of the units in the stack.

OR perhaps the units def+hp. So a unit with def 3 and 10 hp would take 13 damage out of the pool before moving to the next.

numbers of course would have to be played with but you get the gist of it.

FKN

William

Successfully updated karma reason!

A simple solution would be to keep things essentially as they are now (Sum the groups) but limit how many units in a group can attack/defend based on terrain and number of targets in the opposing group. For instance, it makes no sense that if a lone individual is fighting 10 others he would actually be attacked and defend against all 10. Realistically only 2 to 5 of them can get to him at one time, depending on terrain and other factors.

So the general rule for normal size targets would be that individual units roll against as little as 2 units if they have great terrain advantage, and against as many as 5 with huge terrain disadvantage, but usually against 3 or 4.

Small individual targets (imps maybe?) could get a bonus of -1 to this number, and larger units like giants and dragons would get a penalty as high as +5.

This would all also apply for groups of 3 fighting groups of 10. With a slight terrain advantage the group of 3 would only roll against 9 of the 10 enemies, and with a major advantage they would roll against only 6 of the 10. All other circumstances they would roll against all 10.

I think this would resolve the issue entirely, leaving groups quite powerful most of the time, but giving reasonable survivability to champions.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Tasunke,

reply 74

basically, you need good weapons to pierce good armor. Attack shouldn't stack. Nuff said.

Unless there's enough of you to simply pin the victim and stab them through the eye slits anyway.

Successfully updated karma reason!